The entrance to Newgate is through the keeper’s lodge, which, with the house in which the keeper lives, occupies the centre of what has been well called “this vast quarry of stone.” It fronts on the Old Bailey. The prisoner’s quarters are in the wings, which extend from either side of the keeper’s quarters. In the gloomy office, men with that indescribable prison air all such officials bear, lounge about, and come and go on business. There is iron everywhere, from the huge bolts on the outer doors, and the door inside of them, to the barred windows and other doors beyond number, that open and shut with a sullen clangor that goes echoing through the stone passages as if it would never die away. The smell of the jail is as powerful in its way as these evidences of its actual strength. It blows into your face in a strong breath when the door opens for you, and you find it lingering about you hours after 41 your visit has been made. Some scientist ought to analyze this odor of the prison. It is unique. A soldier’s barracks, a hospital, a ship’s forecastle—all places, in short, where men live in close quarters—have an odor that tells of their origin; but the scent of the jail is different from all, and as horrible as the thing it recalls to you whenever you breathe it, or fancy you do.

“What London pedestrian is there,” writes Dickens, in chapter 24 in the “Sketches by Boz,” “who has not, at some time or other, cast a hurried glance through the wicket at which the prisoners are admitted into this gloomy mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern, with an indescribable feeling of curiosity. The thick door, plated with iron, and mounted with spikes just low enough to enable you to see leaning over them an ill-looking fellow, in a broad-brimmed hat, Belcher handkerchief and top-boots; with a brown coat, something between a great-coat and a ‘sporting’ jacket, on his back, and an immense key in his left hand. Perhaps you are lucky enough to pass just as the gate is being opened; then, you see on the other side of the lodge another gate, 42 the image of its predecessor, and two or three more turnkeys, who look like multiplications of the first one, seated around a fire, which just lights up the white-washed apartment sufficiently to enable you to catch a glimpse of these different objects.” In the next paper of the same series, he conducts us within the lodge. “One side is plentifully garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons, including those worn by the redoubtable Jack Sheppard—genuine; and those said to have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less celebrated Dick Turpin—doubtful. From this lodge a heavy oaken gate, bound with iron, studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another turnkey, opens on a few steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a narrow and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey and leading to the different yards, through a number of tortuous and intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates and gratings, whose appearance is sufficient to dispel at once the slightest hope of escape that any newcomer may have entertained; and the very recollection of which, on eventually traversing the place again, involves one in a maze of confusion.”

The old Newgate which the Gordon rioters sacked was a horrible place. The cells were mere black caves, which riddled the tremendous masonry like a stone honeycomb. In these at one time, while a contagious fever was raging, 800 prisoners were confined. The captives were packed in these dens like slaves in the hold of their prison-ship. Mrs. Frye describes the women as “swearing, gaming, fighting, singing, dancing, drinking, and dressing up in men’s clothes,” and as late as 1838 gambling with cards, dice and draughts was common among the male prisoners. Jail distempers now and then purged this sink of vileness of a portion of its inmates, till at last, in 1858, the reconstruction of its cellular system was completed. Even with that, however, Newgate is anything but a perfect jail. In the earlier Dickens era it preserved many of its ancient characteristics. In “Great Expectations,” when Wemmick takes Pip to visit it, we read: “At that time gaols were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrong-doing—and which is always its longest and heaviest punishment—was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed 44 better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavor of their soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners behind the bars in the yards were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frowsy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.” The earlier description, “A Visit to Newgate,” in the Boz “Sketches,” thus depicts the women’s side of the jail:

“The buildings in the prison—or in other words the different wards—form a square, of which the four sides abut respectively on the Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now forming a part of Newgate Market), the Sessions House and Newgate street. The intermediate space is divided into several paved yards, in which the prisoners take such air and exercise as can be had in such a place. These yards, with the exception of that in which the prisoners under the sentence of death are confined, run parallel with Newgate street, and consequently from the Old Bailey, as it were, to Newgate Market. Turning to the right, we came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were discernible, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women. One side of this yard is railed at a considerable 45 distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five feet and ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defended in the front by iron bars, from which the friends of the female prisoners communicate with them. Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating conversing with their friends, but a very large portion of the prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their old companions as might happen to be within the walls. We were conducted up a clean and well lighted flight of stone steps to one of the wards. A description of one is a description of the whole.

“It was in a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment, lighted, of course, by windows looking into the interior of the prison, but far more light and airy than one could reasonably expect to find in such a situation. There was a large fire, with a deal table before it, round which ten or a dozen women were seated on wooden forms at dinner. Along both sides of the room ran a shelf; below it, at regular intervals, a row of large hooks were fixed in the wall, on each of which was hung the sleeping mat of a prisoner; her rug and blanket being folded up, and placed on the shelf above. At night these mats are placed upon the floor, each beneath the hook on which it hangs during the day; and the ward is made to thus answer the purposes both of a day room and a sleeping 46 apartment. Over the fireplace was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were displayed a variety of texts from Scripture, which were also scattered about the room in scraps about the size and shape of the copy slips which are used in schools. On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of stewed beef and brown bread, in pewter dishes which are kept perfectly bright, and displayed on shelves in great order and regularity when not in use.

“In every ward of the female side a wards-woman is appointed to preserve order, and a similar regulation is adopted among the males. The wards-men and wards-women are all prisoners, selected for good conduct. They alone are allowed the privilege of sleeping on bedsteads: a small stump bedstead being placed in every ward for the purpose.”

This, in itself, was a vast improvement on the style of the last century in Newgate. Then the prisoner had no comfort unless he paid roundly for it. His cell contained a stone bench or two, on which the first comer might make his bed. The rest slept on the floor. Once in a great while a truss of straw was tossed in to them, as it might have been to a beast in a stall. This straw remained until it rotted to a pulp. Then another truss was used to scatter over it. So, in time, the prisoners slept 47 on a veritable dunghill, the compost being generally left to fester till it bred a fever, when it would be carted off, to disseminate the germs of disease which it had engendered, outside the jail walls; and the same process was begun over again. In the matter of cleanliness a change for the better had been made in Dickens’s time; but one great evil of the jail was the herding together of the prisoners in the wards. Here the possibly innocent learned evil lessons from the guilty; the depraved could deprave those not yet wholly debased; the gaol became, in short, not so much a place of punishment for crime as a powerful breeder of it, and many a man and boy, and woman and girl, who went into Newgate for a trivial offense, emerged from it a full-fledged and incorrigible lawbreaker. So outrageous did this condition of things become that many thoughtful men began seriously to question whether the means of restricting crime, as practiced in Newgate, were not really worse than the crime itself. In the sketch already quoted, Dickens says:

“They (the men’s wards) are provided, like the wards of the women’s side, with mats and rugs, which are disposed of in the same manner during 48 the day; the only very striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards inhabited by the women is the utter absence of employment. Huddled on two opposite forms by the fireside sit twenty men, perhaps; here a boy in livery; there a man in a rough great-coat and top-boots; further on, a desperate-looking fellow in his shirtsleeves, with an old Scotch cap upon his shaggy head; near him again, a tall ruffian in a smock-frock; next to him a miserable being of distressed appearance, with his head resting on his hand—all alike in one respect, all idle and listless; when they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the windows, or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging their bodies to and fro. With the exception of an old man reading a newspaper, in two or three instances this was the case in every ward we entered. The only communication these men have with their friends is through two close iron gratings, with an intermediate space of about a yard in width between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the prisoner have any communication by touch with the person who visits him. The married men have a separate grating at which to see their wives, but its construction is the same.”

When the prisoners had visitors a keeper always sat in the space between the gratings, so that private communication was practically 49 impossible. The only exception was made in favor of lawyers in visiting their clients; but prisoners of note could secure the privilege of privacy through the pressure of official influence on the head keeper. In fact, during later years an effort, only partially successful, was made in Newgate to grade the prisoners according to their criminal standard, and to keep the classes apart. So, persistent and desperate offenders were assigned to one ward and those less confirmed in crime to another, while boys and youths were separated from the older prisoners, whose influence on them could not be but for evil. Under the more humane management of the present century Newgate was even provided with a school. “A portion of the prison,” says Boz, in his “Visit,” “is set apart for boys under fourteen years of age.” “In a tolerable sized room, in which were writing materials and some copybooks, was the school-master with a couple of his pupils; the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining apartment, the whole were drawn up in a line for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in all, some with shoes, some without; some in pinafores without jackets, others in jackets 50 without pinafores, and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number, without an exception, we believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket-picking; and fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. There was not a glance of honesty, not a wink expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks, in the whole collection. As to anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely out of the question. They were evidently quite gratified at being thought worth the trouble of looking at; their idea appeared to be that we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an indispensable part of the show; and every boy as he ‘fell in’ to the line actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done something excessively meritorious in getting there at all.”

Dickens had made a close study of this type of London gamin, as we have discovered in his Artful Dodger, Master Bates, and other demoralizing and diverting characterizations. In the Boz sketch called “Criminal Courts” he describes the trial of such an imp at the Old Bailey court:

“A boy of thirteen is tried, say, for picking 51 the pocket of some subject of Her Majesty, and the offense is about as clearly proved as an offense can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country; asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy against him. However probable his statement may be, it fails to convince the Court, and some such scene as the following takes place:

“Court: Have you any witnesses to speak for your character, boy?

“Boy: Yes, my Lord; fifteen gen’lm’n is a vaten outside, and vos avaten all day yesterday, vich they told me the night afore my trial vos a coming on.

“Court: Inquire for these witnesses.

“Here a stout beadle runs out, and vociferates for the witness at the very top of his voice; for you hear his cry grow fainter and fainter as he descends the steps into the courtyard below. After an absence of five minutes he returns, very warm and hoarse, and informs the Court of what he knew perfectly well before—namely, that there are no such witnesses in attendance. Hereupon the boy sets up a most awful howling, screws the lower part of the palms of his hands into the corners of his eyes, and endeavors to look the picture of injured innocence. The jury at once find him ‘guilty,’ 52 and his endeavors to squeeze out a tear are redoubled. The governor of the gaol then states, in reply to an inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner has been under his care twice before. This the urchin resolutely denies in some such terms as: ‘S’elp me, gen’lm’n, I never vos in trouble afore—indeed, my Lord, I never vos. It’s all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully got into trouble, and vich is so exactly like me, that no one ever knows the difference atween us.’

“This representation, like the defence, fails in producing the desired effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps, to seven years’ transportation. Finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives vent to his feelings in an imprecation bearing reference to the eyes of ‘old big vig,’ and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the dock, is forthwith carried out, congratulating himself on having succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible.”

In a similar vein, when the Artful Dodger falls into the toils (“Oliver Twist,” Chapter 43) he asserts himself.

“It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the gaoler, with a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and taking 53 his place in the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was placed in ‘that ’ere disgraceful situation for.’

“‘Hold your tongue, will you?’ said the gaoler.

“‘I’m an Englishman, ain’t I?’ rejoined the Dodger. ‘Where are my privileges?’

“‘You’ll get your privileges soon enough,’ retorted the gaoler, ‘and pepper with ’em.’

“‘We’ll see what the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has got to say to the beaks, if I don’t,’ replied Mr. Dawkins.

“‘Now then. Wot is this here business? I shall thank the madg’strates to dispose of this little affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper, for I’ve got an appointment with a gentleman in the city, and as I’m a man of my word and very punctual in business matters, he’ll go away if I ain’t there to my time, and then p’raps there won’t be an action for damages against them as kept me away. Oh, no, certainly not.’

“At this point the Dodger, with a show of being very particular with a view to the proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the gaoler to communicate ‘the names of them two files as was on the bench,’ which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost as heartily as Master Bates could have done if he had heard the request.

“‘Silence there,’ cried the gaoler.

54

“‘What is this?’ inquired one of the magistrates.

“‘A pocket-picketing case, your worship.’

“‘Has the boy ever been here before?’

“‘He ought to have been, a many times,’ replied the gaoler. ‘He has been pretty well everywhere else. I know him well, your worship.’

“‘Oh, you know me, do you?’ cried the Artful, making a note of the statement. ‘Werry good. That’s a case of deformation of character, any way.’

“Here there was another laugh, and another cry for silence.

“‘Now then, where are the witnesses?’ said the clerk.

“‘Ah, that’s right,’ added the Dodger. ‘Where are they? I should like to see ’em.’

“This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an unknown gentleman in the crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom, which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back again, after trying it on his own countenance. For this reason he took the Dodger into custody as soon as he could get near him, and the said Dodger being searched, had upon his person a silver snuff-box, with the owner’s name engraved upon the lid. This gentleman had been discovered upon reference to the Court Guide, and being 55 then and there present, swore that the snuff-box was his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he had disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to. He had also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly active in making his way about, and that the young gentleman was the prisoner before him.

“‘Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?’ said the magistrate.

“‘I wouldn’t abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with him,’ replied the Dodger.

“‘Have you anything to say at all?’

“‘Do you hear his worship ask if you’ve anything to say?’ inquired the gaoler, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.

“‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Dodger, looking up with an air of abstraction.

“‘Did you mean to say anything, you young shaver?’

“‘No,’ replied the Dodger, ‘not here, for this ain’t the shop for justice; besides which, my attorney is a breakfasting this morning with the Wice-President of the House of Commons; but I shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery numerous and ’spectable circle of acquaintances as’ll make them beaks wish they’d never been born, or that they’d got their footman to hang ’em up to their 56 own hat-pegs afore they let ’em come out this morning to try it upon me. I’ll——’

“‘There. He’s fully committed,’ interposed the clerk. ‘Take him away.’

“‘Oh, ah. I’ll come on,’ replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with the palm of his hand. ‘Ah (to the bench) it’s no use your looking frightened; I won’t show you no mercy, not a ha’porth of it. You’ll pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn’t be you for something; I wouldn’t go free now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask me. Here, carry me off to prison. Take me away.’

“With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by the collar, threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of it, and then grinning in the officer’s face with glee and self approval.”